by Stephen King
“What took you so long?” Pete Freeman asked. “It can’t be much more than three miles between God Creek and here.”
“Well, that’s a funny thing,” Sam said. “I was comin up the road—you know, Black Ridge Road—and I got over the bridge okay … still suckin on the first tank, although it was gettin almighty hot, and … say! Did you folks see that dead bear? The one that looked like it bashed its own brains out on a phone-pole?”
“We saw it,” Rusty said. “Let me guess. A little way past the bear, you got woozy and passed out.”
“How’d you know that?”
“We came that way,” Rusty said, “and there’s some kind of force working out there. It seems to hit kids and old people hardest.”
“I ain’t that old,” Sam said, sounding offended. “I just went whitehair early, like my mom.”
“How long were you knocked out?” Barbie asked.
“Well, I don’t wear no watch, but it was dark when I finally got goin again, so it was quite awhile. I woke up once on account of I couldn’t hardly breathe, switched to one of the fresh tanks, and went back to sleep again. Crazy, huh? And the dreams I had! Like a three-ring circus! Last time I woke up I was really awake. It was dark, and I went on to another tank. Makin the switch wasn’t a bit hard, because it wasn’t really dark. Shoulda been, shoulda been darker’n a tomcat’s asshole with all the soot that fire flang on the Dome, but there’s a bright patch down there where I laid up. You can’t see it in daylight, but at night it’s like about a billion fireflies.”
“The glow-belt, we call it,” Joe said. He and Norrie and Benny were bunched together. Benny was coughing into his hand.
“Good name for it,” Sam said approvingly. “Anyway, I knew somebody was up here, because by then I could hear those fans and see the lights.” He nodded toward the encampment on the other side of the Dome. “Didn’t know if I was going to make it before my air ran out—that hill’s a bugger and I sucked up the oh-two like nobody’s business—but I did.”
He was looking curiously at Cox.
“Hey there, Colonel Klink, I can see your breath. You best either put on a coat or come over here where it’s warm.” He cackled, showing a few surviving teeth.
“It’s Cox, not Klink, and I’m fine.”
Julia asked, “What did you dream, Sam?”
“Funny you should ask,” he said, “because there’s only one I can remember out of the whole bunch, and that was about you. You was layin on the bandstand in the Common, and you was cryin.”
Julia squeezed Barbie’s hand, and hard, but her eyes never left Sam’s face. “How did you know it was me?”
“Because you was covered with newspapers,” Sam said. “Issues of the Democrat. You was huggin em against you like you was naked underneath, beggin your pardon, but you asked. Ain’t that just about the funniest dream you ever heard?”
Cox’s walkie-talkie beeped three times: break-break-break. He took it off his belt. “What is it? Talk to me fast, I’m busy over here.”
They all heard the voice that returned: “We have a survivor on the south side, Colonel. Repeat: We have a survivor. ”
8
As the sun came up on the morning of October twenty-eighth, “surviving” was all the last member of the Dinsmore family could claim. Ollie lay with his body pressed against the bottom of the Dome, gasping in just enough air from the big fans on the other side to stay alive.
It had been a race just to get enough of the Dome clear on his side before the remaining oxygen in the tank ran out. It was the one he’d left on the floor when he crawled under the potatoes. He remembered wondering if it would explode. It hadn’t, and that was a very good thing for Oliver H. Dinsmore. If it had, he would now be lying dead under a burial mound of russets and long whites.
He had knelt on his side of the Dome, digging off cakes of black crud, aware that some of the stuff was all that remained of human beings. It was impossible to forget when he was being repeatedly stabbed by fragments of bone. Without Private Ames’s steady encouragement, he was sure he would have given up. But Ames wouldn’t give up, just kept hectoring him to dig, goddammit, dig that shit clear, cow-kid, you got to do it so the fans can work.
Ollie thought he hadn’t given up because Ames didn’t know his name. Ollie had lived with the kids at school calling him shitkicker and titpuller, but he was goddamned if he was going to die listening to some cracker from South Carolina call him cow-kid.
The fans had started up with a roar, and he had felt the first faint gusts of air on his overheated skin. He tore the mask off his face and pressed his mouth and nose directly against the dirty surface of the Dome. Then, gasping and coughing out soot, he continued scraping at the plated char. He could see Ames on the other side, down on his hands and knees with his head cocked like a man trying to peer into a mousehole.
“That’s it!” he shouted. “We got two more fans we’re bringin up. Don’t you give up on me, cow-kid! Don’t you quit!”
“Ollie,” he had gasped.
“What?”
“Name’s … Ollie. Stop calling me … cow-kid.”
“Ah’ll call you Ollie from now until doomsday, if you just keep clearin a space for those fans to work.”
Ollie’s lungs somehow managed to suck in just enough of what was seeping through the Dome to keep him alive and conscious. He watched the world lighten through his slot in the soot. The light helped, too, although it hurt his heart to see the rose-glow of dawn dirtied by the film of filth that still remained on his side of the Dome. The light was good, because in here everything was dark and scorched and hard and silent.
They tried to relieve Ames of duty at five AM, but Ollie screamed for him to stay, and Ames refused to leave. Whoever was in charge relented. Little by little, pausing to press his mouth to the Dome and suck in more air, Ollie told how he had survived.
“I knew I’d have to wait for the fire to go out,” he said, “so I took it real easy on the oxygen. Grampy Tom told me once that one tank could last him all night if he was asleep, so I just laid there still. For quite a while I didn’t have to use it at all, because there was air under the potatoes and I breathed that.”
He put his lips to the surface, tasting the soot, knowing it might be the residue of a person who had been alive twenty-four hours previous, not caring. He sucked greedily and hacked out blackish crud until he could go on.
“It was cold under the potatoes at first, but then it got warm and then it got hot. I thought I’d burn alive. The barn was burning down right over my head. Everything was burning. But it was so hot and so quick it didn’t last long, and maybe that was what saved me. I don’t know. I stayed where I was until the first tank was empty. Then I had to go out. I was afraid the other one might have exploded, but it didn’t. I bet it was close, though.”
Ames nodded. Ollie sucked more air through the Dome. It was like trying to breathe through a thick, dirty cloth.
“And the stairs. If they’d been wood instead of concrete block, I couldn’t have gotten out. I didn’t even try at first. I just crawled back under the spuds because it was so hot. The ones on the outside of the pile cooked in their jackets—I could smell em. Then it started to get hard to pull air, and I knew the second tank was running out, too.”
He stopped as a coughing fit shook him. When it was under control, he went on.
“Mostly I just wanted to hear a human voice again before I died. I’m glad it was you, Private Ames.”
“My name’s Clint, Ollie. And you’re not going to die.”
But the eyes that looked through the dirty slot at the bottom of the Dome, like eyes peering through a glass window in a coffin, seemed to know some other, truer truth.
9
The second time the buzzer went off, Carter knew what it was, even though it awakened him from a dreamless sleep. Because part of him wasn’t going to really sleep again until this was over or he was dead. That was what the survival instinct was, he guessed: an unsleeping wa
tchman deep in the brain.
The second time was around seven thirty on Saturday morning.
He knew that because his watch was the kind that lit up if you pressed a button. The emergency lights had died during the night and the fallout shelter was completely black.
He sat up and felt something poke against the back of his neck. The barrel of the flashlight he’d used last night, he supposed. He fumbled for it and turned it on. He was on the floor. Big Jim was on the couch. It was Big Jim who had poked him with the flashlight.
Of course he gets the couch, Carter thought resentfully. He’s the boss, isn’t he?
“Go on, son,” Big Jim said. “Quick as you can.”
Why does it have to be me? Carter thought … but did not say. It had to be him because the boss was old, the boss was fat, the boss had a bad heart. And because he was the boss, of course. James Rennie, the Emperor of Chester’s Mill.
Emperor of used cars, that’s all you are, Carter thought. And you stink of sweat and sardine oil.
“Go on.” Sounding irritable. And scared. “What are you waiting for?”
Carter stood up, the flashlight-beam bouncing off the fallout shelter’s packed shelves (so many cans of sardines!), and made his way into the bunkroom. One emergency light was still on in here, but it was guttering, almost out. The buzzer was louder now, a steady AAAAAAAAAAAA sound. The sound of oncoming doom.
We’re never getting out of here, Carter thought.
He shone the flashlight beam on the trapdoor in front of the generator, which continued to utter the toneless irritating buzz that for some reason made him think of the boss when the boss was speechifying. Maybe because both noises came down to the same stupid imperative: Feed me, feed me, feed me. Give me propane, give me sardines, give me premium unleaded for my Hummer. Feed me. I’ll still die, and then you’ll die, but who cares? Who gives a ripe red fuck? Feed me, feed me, feed me.
Inside the storage bin there were now only six tanks of propane. When he replaced the one that was almost empty, there would be five. Five piss-little containers, not much bigger than Blue Rhino tanks, between them and choking to death when the air purifier quit.
Carter pulled one out of the storage space, but he only set it beside the gennie. He had no intention of replacing the current tank until it was totally empty, in spite of that irritating AAAAAAA. Nope. Nope. Like they used to say about Maxwell House coffee, it was good to the last drop.
But that buzzer could certainly get on a person’s nerves. Carter reckoned he could find the alarm and silence it, but then how would they know when the gennie was running dry?
Like a couple of rats trapped in an overturned bucket, that’s what we are.
He ran the numbers in his head. Six tanks left, each good for about eleven hours. But they could turn off the air-conditioner, and that might stretch it to twelve or even thirteen hours per tank. Stay on the safe side and say twelve. Twelve times six was … let’s see …
The AAAAAAAA made the math harder than it should have been, but he finally got there. Seventy-two hours between them and a miserable choking death down here in the dark. And why was it dark? Because no one had bothered to replace the batteries in the emergency lights, that was why. They probably hadn’t been changed for twenty years or more. The boss had been saving money. And why only seven little shitlicking tanks in the storage cubby when there had been about a zillion gallons out at WCIK, just waiting to blow up? Because the boss liked to have everything right where he wanted it.
Sitting there, listening to the AAAAAAA, Carter remembered one of his dad’s sayings: Hoard a penny and lose a dollar. That was Rennie right down to the floor. Rennie the Emperor of Used Cars. Rennie the bigshot politician. Rennie the drug kingpin. How much had he made with his drug operation? A million dollars? Two? And did it matter?
He probably never would have spent it, Carter thought, and he’s sure as shit not gonna spend it now. Nothing to spend it on down here. He’s got all the sardines he can eat, and they’re free.
“Carter?” Big Jim’s voice came floating through the darkness. “Are you going to change that out, or are we just going to listen to it buzz?”
Carter opened his mouth to holler they were going to wait, that every minute counted, but just then the AAAAAAA finally quit. So did the queep-queep-queep of the air purifier.
“Carter?”
“I’m on it, boss.” With the flashlight clamped in his armpit, Carter pulled the empty, put the full one on a metal platform that was big enough to hold a tank ten times this one’s size, and hooked up the connector.
Every minute counted … or did it? Why did it, if it was going to come down to the same choking conclusion?
But the survival-watchman inside thought that was a bullshit question. The survival-watchman thought seventy-two hours was seventy-two hours, and every minute of those seventy-two hours counted. Because who knew what might happen? The military guys might finally figure out how to crack the Dome open. It might even disappear on its own, going as suddenly and inexplicably as it had come.
“Carter? What are you doing back there? My cotton-picking grandmother could move faster, and she’s dead!”
“Almost done.”
He made sure the connection was tight and put his thumb on the starter-button (thinking that if the little generator’s starter-battery was as old as the batteries that had been powering the emergency lights, they were in trouble). Then he paused.
It was seventy-two hours if it was the two of them. But if it was just him, he could stretch it to ninety or maybe even a hundred by shutting down the purifier until the air got really thick. He had broached this idea to Big Jim, who had vetoed it out of hand.
“Got a dickey heart,” he had reminded Carter. “The thicker the air is, the more likely it is to play up on me.”
“Carter?” Loud and demanding. A voice that got up in his ears the way the smell of the boss’s sardines got up his nose. “What’s going on back there?”
“All set, boss!” he called, and pushed the button. The starter-motor whirred, and the gennie fired up at once.
I have to think about this, Carter told himself, but the survival-watchman thought differently. The survival-watchman thought that every minute lost was a minute wasted.
He was good to me, Carter told himself. He gave me responsibilities.
Dirty jobs he didn’t want to do himself is what he gave you. And a hole in the ground to die in. That too.
Carter made up his mind. He pulled his Beretta from its holster as he walked back into the main room. He considered putting it behind his back so the boss wouldn’t know, and decided against it. The man had called him son, after all, and might even have meant it. He deserved better than an unexpected shot in the back of the head and going out all unprepared.
10
It wasn’t dark at the far northeastern end of town; here the Dome was badly smudged but far from opaque. The sun glared through and turned everything a feverish pink.
Norrie ran to Barbie and Julia. The girl was coughing and out of breath, but she ran anyway.
“My grampy is having a heart attack!” she wailed, and then fell on her knees, hacking and gasping.
Julia put her arms around the girl and turned her face to the roaring fans. Barbie crawled to where the exiles were surrounding Ernie Calvert, Rusty Everett, Ginny Tomlinson, and Dougie Twitchell.
“Give them room, people!” Barbie snapped. “Give the guy some air!”
“That’s the problem,” Tony Guay said. “They gave him what was left … the stuff that was supposed to be for the kids … but—”
“Epi,” Rusty said, and Twitch handed him a syringe. Rusty injected it. “Ginny, start compressions. When you get tired, let Twitch take over. Then me.”
“I want to, too,” Joanie said. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she seemed composed enough. “I took a class.”
“I was in it too,” Claire said. “I’ll help.”
“And me,” Linda sa
id quietly. “I took the refresher just last summer.”
It’s a small town and we all support the team, Barbie thought. Ginny—her face still swollen from her own injuries—began chest compressions. She gave way to Twitch just as Julia and Norrie joined Barbie.
“Will they be able to save him?” Norrie asked.
“I don’t know,” Barbie said. But he did know; that was the hell of it.
Twitch took over from Ginny. Barbie watched as drops of sweat from Twitch’s forehead darkened Ernie’s shirt. After about five minutes he stopped, coughing breathlessly. When Rusty started to move in, Twitch shook his head. “He’s gone.” Twitch turned to Joanie and said, “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Calvert.”
Joanie’s face trembled, then crumpled. She let out a cry of grief that turned into a coughing fit. Norrie hugged her, coughing again herself.
“Barbie,” a voice said. “A word?”
It was Cox, now dressed in brown camo and wearing a fleece jacket against the chill on the other side. Barbie didn’t like the somber expression on Cox’s face. Julia went with him. They leaned close to the Dome, trying to breathe slowly and evenly.
“There’s been an accident at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.” Cox kept his voice pitched low. “They were running final tests on the pencil nuke we meant to try, and … shit.”
“It exploded ?” Julia asked, horrified.
“No, ma’am, melted down. Two people were killed, and another half dozen are apt to die of radiation burns and/or radiation poisoning. The point is, we lost the nuke. We lost the fucking nuke.”
“Was it a malfunction?” Barbie asked. Almost hoping that it had been, because that meant it wouldn’t have worked, anyway.
“No, Colonel, it did not. That’s why I used the word accident. They happen when people hurry, and we’ve been hurrying our collective ass off.”
“I’m so sorry for those men,” Julia said. “Do their relatives know yet?”
“Given your own situation, it’s very kind of you to think of that. They’ll be informed soon. The accident occurred at one o’clock this morning. Work has already begun on Little Boy Two. It should be ready in three days. Four at most.”
